By Christopher Summers and Christopher Yablonskiweb
posted February 21, 2000

On September 11, 1997 President Clinton issued Executive Order 13061
creating the American Heritage Rivers Initiative (AHRI). Without seeking
congressional approval, the President gave environmental activists and
their private foundation patrons something for which they had lobbied
for years.

AHRI is a program which bundles together hundreds of river-maintenance
programs operated by 13 federal agencies into a single initiative for
"natural resource and environmental protection, economic revitalization,
and historic and cultural preservation." Under AHRI, communities
adjacent to 14 designated "American Heritage Rivers" will obtain
the services of a so-called "river navigator." This is a federal
official who will coordinate community efforts to take advantage of many
federal programs.

Local governments may refuse to participate in AHRI. Similarly, members
of Congress may remove areas along AHRI-designated rivers in their states
or congressional districts from participation in the program. But supporters
of the program are quickly building constituencies to defend and expand
it. AHRI has empowered unelected foundation and nonprofit operatives,
and they are shifting the political balance dramatically in favor of taxpayer
land acquisition and land-use regulation.

The Clinton Administration argues that AHRI is merely an administrative
device to help communities better handle all the federal programs affecting
rivers. But by accident or design, the initiative enables environmental
groups and liberal foundations to implement a radical policy agenda.

Policy Development

President Clinton first mentioned AHRI in his State of the Union address
in February 1997. But the idea of a river-based concentration of federal
land-use regulations had been brewing for years.

In the last decade, private foundations have funded nonprofit groups
that are determined to expel human activity from rural lands. National
organizations like the Nature Conservancy and Conservation Fund and local
land trusts across the country have increasingly pressured private property
owners to sell them their land, which they then resell to state or federal
governments. Major donors to the Nature Conservancy in the four years
preceding AHRI include the Champlin Foundations ($3.3 million), the Ford
Foundation ($2.7 million), the William Penn Foundation (almost $4 million)
and the Pew Charitable Trusts ($5.4 million).

The Conservation Funds top foundation supporters from 1994 through
1997 include the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation ($800,000), the
McKnight Foundation ($425,000), the Richard King Mellon Foundation ($2.8
million), the William Penn Foundation ($539,000), and the Pinewood Foundation
($1.5 million).

The organization American Rivers (AR) also wants to protect nature from
man. It crusades to deny federal reli-censing to hydroelectric dams and
to remove life-saving levies from floodplains. The Bullitt Foundation
financed American Rivers from 1995 through 1997 with $285,000 in grants
targeted at ARs dam lobbying efforts.

Defenders of Wildlife is a prominent advocate for re-introducing predatory
grey wolves into Western lands, constricting ranch and farm activities.
It has the backing of the Meyer Memorial Trust ($100,000 in 1997) and
the Surdna Foundation ($200,000 in 1997, $100,000 in 1996). These organizations
have become key supporters of the Administration initiative.

But the National Trust for Historic Preservation was the most important
AHRI proponent. It was the catalyst which first developed the concept
of fusing environmental protection to historical preservation and economic
planning. During the 1990s, its Rural Heritage Program promoted "heritage
areas" that it wanted government to cordon off from free market economic
development. The program even catalogued potential nominees for the designation
should government adopt its program. The National Trust pushed Hawaiis
Hanalei River as a candidate for federal "heritage" protection
three years before AHRI.

Congressional debate over national heritage area designations led the
Trust to establish the National Coalition for Heritage Areas (NCHA) in
1994. Alvin Rosenbaum, whose writings are often published in National
Trust publications, became NCHA President, and National Trust official
Shelley Mastran was named executive director. Rosenbaum has described
NCHAs concept of heritage areas as "most often regions with
a distinctive sense of place unified by large-scale resources: rivers,
lakes or streams, canal systems" that most often "comprise more
than one jurisdiction, with regional management that combines public and
private sector leadership."

From 1994 to 1997, the National Trust and NCHA laid the ideological groundwork
for AHRI. During this period, the National Trust netted ontributions from
supporters like the Fondren Foundation ($108,000), the J. Paul Getty Trust
($109,000), the George Gund Foundation ($175,000), the John S. and James
L. Knight Foundation ($225,000), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation ($350,000),
the William Penn Foundation ($82,500), the Pew Charitable Trusts ($400,000)
and the Surdna Foundation ($150,000). We have no information on NCHA funding,
but Rosenbaums new American Heritage River Alliance is touted as
a source of private funds for AHRI projects.

The massive 1993 floods of the Mississippi River basin prompted the Clinton
Administrations interest in what would become AHRI. The following
year, a little-noticed report by the Interagency Floodplain Management
Review Committee recommended increased federal micro-management of local
land-use decisions as a "pre-disaster response." New Directions
in Floodplain Management recommended that "the division of decision
and cost-sharing responsibilities among federal, state and local governments
be more clearly defined" and suggested that "the President should
immediately establish environmental quality and national economic development
as co-equal objectives of planning." Pre-disaster response became
the pretext for a federal mandate over local land-use and federal acquisition
of property adjacent to rivers. This effort was aided by long-time Clinton
aide James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The Clinton Administration incorporated several New Directions proposals
directly into AHRI. The reports proposed Interagency Task Force
to coordinate strategy became the 13-agency American Heritage Rivers Interagency
Committee. Not surprisingly, the reports chief author, Gerald E.
Galloway, Jr., was named to the 12-member AHRI Advisory Committee which
recommends which rivers will participate in the initiative.

Through December 1997, the White House Council on Environmental Quality
accepted 126 detailed applications nominating rivers for the Initiative.
Then the AHRI Advisory Committee sifted through the nominations and in
June 1998 recommended ten rivers to the President. Clinton consulted with
his advisers and added four more rivers: the Cuyahoga, Blackstone/Woonasqua-tucket,
lower Mississippi and upper Susquehanna/Lackawanna. Clinton and Vice President
Gore announced the 14 designations on July 30, 1998 at a ceremony overlooking
the New River in North Carolina.

Whos Running AHRI?

A 13-member Interagency Committee oversees the Initiative. That Committee
is comprised of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, Council
on Environmental Quality, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the
National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities and eight cabinet-level
departments: Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, HUD, Interior, Justice
and Transportation. Heritage Foundation analyst Alexander Annett estimates
that these 13 agencies operate approximately 100 regulatory and assistance
programs whose goals are within the scope of AHRI.

CEQ Acting Chair George T. Frampton, Jr. is permanent co-chair of the
Committee. (A second co-chair rotates among the other member agencies.)
Frampton, who was Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife
and Parks from 1993 to 1997, has yet to be confirmed by the Senate as
head of CEQ.

Perhaps thats because before joining the Administration, Frampton
headed the Wilderness Society, where he was an aggressive promoter of
federal land acquisition and expansion of federal wilderness areas and
a fierce opponent of private commercial use of public lands by loggers
and ranchers. (Since 1995, the Ford Foundation has given $450,000 in grants
to theWilderness Society to help it shift its focus to a more media-friendly
mix of conservation and economic development, the theme of AHRI.) Later,
as Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Frampton incurred
the Senates ire by encouraging the United Nations to pursue its
ultimately successful effort to stop mining on private property near Yellowstone
National Park on the grounds that the Park was a designated UN "World
Historic Site." (For more on this episode see chapter 7 of the1998
CRC monograph Global Greens: Inside the International Environmental Establishment
by James Sheehan.)

Frampton succeeded former CEQ Chair Kathleen A. McGinty, who shepherded
AHRI from its inception to its implementation in 1998. Earlier, McGinty
directed the White House Office on Environmental Policy. And before that
she was a legislative assistant on environmental policy to then-Senator
Al Gore. Currently, McGinty is a visiting fellow at the Tata Energy Research
Institute in New Delhi, India. Tata has ties to the Ford Foundation, which
gave it a $215,200 grant in 1997, and the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation, which gave Tata a $130,000 grant the same year.

As this report goes to print, AHRI has hired so-called "river navigators"
for 12 of the 14 American Heritage Rivers. All but one are detailed from
agencies on the Interagency Committee, mainly EPA, the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers and the USDAs Natural Resources Conservation Service
and the Forest Service. The navigators annual salaries are in the
$80,000 range. However, local officials who promoted the selection of
the Hanalei River decided that they would coordinate community efforts
on their own. The Adminstration has not yet named a navigator for the
Rio Grande.

Officially, the Navigators are supposed to set up meetings of community
"stakeholders" (i.e. interest groups) and work closely with
"Community Partners" to assess the need for local projects.
In fact, they are essentially fund-raisers for new land-acquisitions proposed
by environmental groups and political strategists for local activists
who want to prevent private economic development. Navigators help organize
political and lobbying campaigns for land conservation, trail construction
and promotion of historical or cultural facilities. Of course, their fundraising
concentrates on securing federal aid. But Navigators and Community Partners
also seek funding from private foundations and corporations. The allure
of philanthropy can often influence decisions by local planning authorities.

"Community Partners" are designated individuals and organizations.
They are either public officials or representatives of nonprofit organizations.
Local public officials nominated seven of the 14 designated American Heritage
Rivers, and all of them except the officials who nominated the Detroit
River were subsequently designated Community Partners. The other seven
rivers selected by the Initiative were nominated by nonprofit organizations.
In every case, these groups became the official Community Partner for
the river they promoted. (See box below for names of Community Partners.)
It seems likely that when a Community Partner decides to work with the
federal gov-ernments River Navigator on a local land-use decision
it will have an enormous political advantage that cant be matched
by the competing interests of local businesses and property owners. Besides
formulating new regulations and growth-killing habitat agreements, Community
Partners will also be able to create powerful new intergovernmental and
nonprofit structures to threaten local self-government and private property.

Community Partners have already convened meetings of their political
allies to begin implementing AHRI. Various councils of local government
officials, environmentalists, historical preservationists and, in some
cases, favored business leaders have drawn up "action plans"
for their rivers. Often the meetings short-circuit the normal deliberative
process of local government, making decisions by "consensus"
instead of recorded votes.

Hawaiis Hanalei River

Consider, for instance, AHRI plans for the Hanalei River on the Hawaiian
island of Kauai. University of Hawaii professor Michael Kido, who spearheaded
the Hanaleis AHRI nomination, was the initial AHRI "community
contact." According to news reports, he nominated the Hanalei without
seeking input from such important local interests as the tour boat industry
and sugar farmers. Shortly after the Haneleis designation was made
public, Kido convened a meeting of his political allies in state government
and in the preservationist community and they drew up a "partnership
agreement" with the federal government. The agreement organized the
"Hanalei River Hui" ("Hui" means club in Hawaiian)
to act as the Community Partner under AHRI. After it had established a
memorandum-of-understanding (MOU) with eleven federal agencies, the Hui
hit the ground running. It secured a grant from the U.S. Forest Service
and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service donated office furniture.
The Hui is now pursuing 501(c)(3) tax status in order to get private foundation
grants.

Once it had the partnership agreement and MOU, Kidos supporters
dropped out of what had been an open, deliberative proceeding known as
the "Limits of Acceptable Change" committee. This was an on-going
dialogue between Hawaiian preservationists and local business interests.
The agreement also let Kidos group use the AHRI designation to promote
"native Hawaiian concepts"  an allusion to Kidos
unrelenting efforts to halt private exploitation of Kauais natural
resources and to promote traditional farming of Hawaiian taro instead
of the more profitable sugar cane.

The Hanalei flows seaward toward Kauais scenic north shore, known
as the Na Pali Coast. The beauty of this largely undeveloped island makes
it well suited for the kind of tourism promoted by AHRI supporters. But
ironically the Hanaleis AHRI designation has led to a ban on river
tour boats and on motorized tour boats along the Na Pali Coast. Kidos
nomination application called for some development of local tourism and
recreation, but the only kind of activities he favors are of the "uncrowded"
variety such as "hiking, photography, kayaking, camping, fishing,
surfing, snorkeling" and "environmental education." AHRI
designation for the Hanalei laid the groundwork for Hawaii Governor Ben
Cayetanos August 1998 ban on tour boat operations along the river.

Local officials like Kauai Mayor Maryanne Kusaka, an original supporter
of the Hanaleis AHRI nomination, were caught off-guard. Last year,
the ban put several small tour boat companies out of business and helped
larger, higher-priced tour boat outfits that operated outside Hanalei
Bay, where the river meets the Pacific. By September 1999, the ban also
phased out motorized boating altogether along the Na Pali Coast, forcing
the last seven tour boat companies to relocate or go out of business.

Cayetanos ban also leaves the Sierra Club Kauai chapter as one
of the few groups providing access to tour groups interested in touring
Na Pali, albeit only for hiking the jagged coast. For a minimum $50 per
group "donation," the Sierra Club provides one-way shuttle service
to or from trails. For years Hawaiis Sierra Club sought to limit
commercial use of the Hanalei River and Na Pali. Its role in the AHRI
nomination and implementation helped secure that goal.

Regulating the New River

Federal agencies and private foundations are working with local activists
to create a permanent nonprofit structure to funnel aid to the parts of
West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina through which the New River
flows. State boundaries have frustrated environmentalists in the past.
But Mikki Sager with the Conservation Fund of North Carolina successfully
nominated the New and she now serves as a community contact helping to
implement AHRI.

In 1994, Sager described 50,000 acres of "protected" wetlands
in North Carolina as a "sustainable economic development area."
This is consistent with AHRIs attempt to reconcile government-mandated
limits on growth with government-planned economic development. The designation
was supported by Alleghany County (NC) Chamber of Commerce executive director
Patrick Woodie, who started New River Community Partners (NRCP) to implement
AHRI. He collected $6 million in federal aid for AHRI projects in the
last year. He also collected support from government agencies and private
foundations for NRCP. The Kathleen Price Bryan Family Fund and the Z.
Smith Reynolds Foundation gave NRCP $40,000 and $100,000 for start-up
costs in 1998. Both foundations were also supporters of the Conservation
Fund of North Carolina and other AHRI supporters who want to link government
economic development to environmental protection.

Sager and Woodie have created a powerful political force for future regulation
and public land acquisition along the New River. As Woodie puts it, "The
designation really provided us with the excuse, the necessity, the impetus
to organize the three states on a watershed-wide basis, which we really
have never done before." In the past year, local North Carolina authorities
have moved to erase statutory limits on public land-ownership adjacent
to the New. Though it expressly discourages direct sale to the federal
government, the New Rivers Action Plan envisions that private landowners
will voluntarily sell easements and land to nonprofit organizations. The
plan suggests that public money be used to make the purchases. It does
not exclude the possibility that nonprofit groups will "flip"
land and conservation easements to state or federal control.

The Conservation Funds Sager has doubled as a FEMA official. She
is helping to buy-out residential areas devastated by flooding in North
Carolina. Along the New River, FEMA has provided $250,000 in grants to
develop an all-hazards mitigation plan in the event of natural disaster.
Moving people away from rivers is FEMAs hazard mitigation strategy
and it plays into the Conservation Funds AHRI strategy. Many in
North Carolina fear that AHRIs close ties to environmentalist activists
has compromised the mission of government agencies like FEMA.

Organized by White House operatives and implemented by favored Community
Partner organizations, AHRI is thoroughly political. The Initiative is
blurring the statutory authority of agencies and it is harnessing federal
power in a way that threatens local autonomy and private property. In
a little over a year, the Initiative has a created a self-perpetuating
political money machine to service liberal environmental groups.

Foundation Funding

Private foundations are financing pro-AHRI advocacy groups and the projects
they are creating to implement AHRI.

AHRI Advisory Committee member Daniel Kemmis argues, "Its
possible for people to come to see that attractive surroundings and well-preserved
ecosystems are the strongest base possible for the enterprises they want
to carry out." Kemmis is director of the University of Montanas
Center for the Rocky Mountain West, which received $69,200 from the Ford
Foundation in 1997 and $100,000 in 1998. Ford gave Kemmis these grants
to develop his theory of "community-base regional planning,"
a concept that ignores local self-government and ultimately erodes private
property rights. Kemmis would put statutory and contractual limits on
growth while creating artificial government incentives for economic development.
Judging from his writings, Kemmis appears to be genuinely committed to
a Third Way between free-market development and draconian land-use regulation.

Two AHRI Advisory Committee members lead nonprofit organizations that
have benefitted most from the Administrations policy. Anthony P.
Grassi chairs the nonprofit group American Rivers. Charles R. Jordan holds
a seat on the board of the Conservation Fund. Both groups have often opposed
rural economic development and they have taken steps to restore wild habitats
by litigating and lobbying federal, state, and local land-use authorities.
Both have bought cheap land and sold it to state and federal governments
at a profit. But the two groups also realize that its often easier
to settle land-use disputes in their favor through cozy intergovernmental
"cooperation" between local jurisdictions rather than through
an open, deliberative process, litigation or purchase.

American Rivers major supporters from 1995 through 1997 include
the Bullitt Foundation ($90,000), the Ford Foundation ($150,000), the
McKnight Foundation ($557,000), Richard King Mellon Foundation ($300,000),
the Pew Charitable Trusts ($600,000) and the Surdna Foundation ($100,000).
Leading foundations bankrolling the Conservation Fund in 1996 and 1997
include the Ford Foundation ($178,000), the W. K. Kellogg Foundation ($200,000),
the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($100,000), the McKnight
Foundation ($75,000) and the William Penn Foundation ($539,000).

Defenders of Wildlife, the Nature Conservancy, the Wilderness Society
and the World Wildlife Fund are other major environmental groups promoting
AHRI. They have submitted river nominations to AHRI and defend the program.
They too receive funding from the Ford Foundation, George Gund Foundation,
Joyce Foundation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Kresge Foundation, MacArthur
Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Richard King Mellon Foundation, Charles
Stewart Mott Foundation, William Penn Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts
and Surdna Foundation.

Minnesotas McKnight Foundation has a long-term interest in the
ecology of the upper Mississippi River. It has translated its concern
into significant support for AHRI. McKnight made a $40,000 contribution
to American Rivers in 1997 specifically for "planning and implementation
the Presidents American Heritage Rivers Initiative." In 1997,
McKnight contributed another $375,000 to American Rivers to promote sustainable
land and water use along the upper Mississippi.

McKnight also reviewed the preceding five years of its project funding
of upper Mississippi projects and announced plans to contribute new grants
for the region totaling $5 million annually over its next five-year period.
McKnights review praised American Rivers: "As a result of advocacy
by American Rivers 10,000 people were moved off the floodplain, 100,000
acres of wetlands were restored."

McKnight now has a funding drive to "support riverfront parks, trails,
and open areas that encourage recreation along the river, protect riverside
lands, help rehabilitate inner-city neighborhoods... and increase appreciation
of the river as a community asset." These are exactly the kinds of
projects for which AHRI bundles federal financial and technical support.
McKnights expansion of its targeted grants to the upper Mississippi
is synchronized to the expansion of federal aid brought about by the rivers
AHRI designation.

Chicagos Joyce Foundation is also financing AHRI goals through
grants to environmental organizations. In 1997, it gave a three-year $419,000
grant to the Sierra Club Foundation to inform the public about the environmental
cost of proposals to expand the shipping capacity of the upper Mississippi
River. Another AHRI supporter, the Mississippi River Basin Alliance netted
two Joyce grants totaling $48,000 for a similar project. Even though it
is a tax-exempt foundation, Joyce has not been coy about involving itself
in local political decisionmaking.

A well-organized coalition of small and large environmental organizations
is promoting expansion of AHRI and the designation of more American Heritage
Rivers. One information packet promoting the initiative includes information
from Americans for Heritage and Recreation (AHR), a coalition of 150 environmental
groups claiming a shared mission, "to renew and preserve our cultural
heritage and provide recreational opportunities for all Americans."
The largest nonprofit members of AHR are the Trust for Public Land and
the Nature Conservancy. In 1998 alone the McKnight Foundation, the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation and the Packard Foundation each gave over $1 million
to the Trust. Two other leading members of the AHR coalition are the Appalachian
Mountain Club and the Northern Forest Alliance. Both advocate more federal
land acquisition and restrictions on private property. The Ford Foundation,
Pew, Surdna, and the Peabody Charitable Fund supported the Mountain Club
with grants in the $100,000 to $500,000 range from 1995 through 1998.
Surdna also has supported the Northern Forest Alliance with annual grants
of around $100,000.

Its important to note that AHRI administrators are touting 22 organizations
as official "Private Sector Supporters." This list includes
high-profile AHRI supporters as well as groups not generally associated
with political advocacy. See the list on page 7.

The American Heritage Rivers Alliance is the Private Sector Supporter
that has the potential to be a major clearinghouse of funds for on-going
AHRI projects. The on-line update which tracks the New Rivers AHRI
implementation describes group discussions which "included defining
and prioritizing recommendations to sustain the AHRI, supporting the fund-raising
work of the AHR Alliance and planning an AHRI Congressional Caucus."
Grants data that will become available next year may shed light on the
role of the American Heritage Rivers Alliance in AHRI fundraising.

Former National Trust for Historic Preservation President Jack Walter
is a consultant with the Alliance and "heritage development"
guru Alvin Rosenbaum is its president. But Rosenbaum has not publicized
its existence. His online resume at www.al.net lists his executive roles
in four preservation organizations, but it omits his leadership of the
Alliance. Yet his manifesto on the National Coalition for Heritage Areas
homepage (www.al.net) explains that new "public and private support"
is a benefit of government designation of heritage areas.

Benefit Program

Many AHRI supporters will reap political and financial rewards from the
Initiative. Activists and foundation officials will wield power over land-use
decision in designated river regions. AHRI designation also gives local
property owners an increased incentive to sell or hand over land and/or
easements on land to environmental groups. Because they often operate
trails or education facilities that AHRI encourages, these groups will
also benefit from "eco-tourism" or "heritage tourism"
that is generated by the American Heritage Rivers designation. Finally,
AHRI brings big federal grants and private foundation gifts to Community
Partners and other nonprofit groups. These benefits raise the specter
of self-dealing among groups and foundations promoting AHRI.

Because of AHRI, McKnight Foundation grantees have attracted much federal
support. Since President Clinton announced the initiative in 1997, McKnight
grant recipients participating in upper Mississippi restoration have received
at least $5.2 million in federal grants. These grants include $159,000
from EPA for Grace Hill Neighborhood Services in St. Louis for a "sustainable
communities project." Another EPA grant covered $50,000 in expenses
at the Land Stewardship Project in Montevideo, Minnesota. Ostensibly,
it was for the "sustainable development of ecologically sound livestock
production."

To some extent, McKnight builds taxpayer funding into its grants strategy.
For instance, the Foundations initial investment of $100,000 in
Trailnet, a St. Louis-area land trust, has helped bring in $3 million
in federal and state aid for the groups development of trails and
"greenways." Its ironic that agenda-driven private foundations
like McKnight can claim success when their clients garner taxpayer funds.

The Private Sector Supporters listed on page 7 appear to have a financial
relationship with AHRI agencies that goes both ways. At least half of
the 22 organizations received federal grants totaling $10.4 million from
1996 through 1999, key years for the initiatives development and
implementation. Several grant descriptions for these awards match the
stated goals of AHRI or they track closely with the rhetoric surrounding
the initiative. For example, a 1998 Bureau of Land Management award to
American Forests made $10,000 available for a workshop called "Exploring
and Understanding Community-Based Approaches to Ecosystem Management in
the U.S."

Sadly, it is not uncommon for taxpayer dollars to fund the training of
left-wing activists. In 1997 and 1998 three EPA grants totalling $385,000
went to the River Network for "watershed outreach." The financing
helped the River Network establish an impressive list of supporters for
AHRI. The Initiative perpetuates the cycle by which liberal environmental
groups feed from the pork-barrel and then grow larger and demand more.

Perhaps more than any other organization, American Rivers is positioned
at the vortex of foundation and taxpayer funding for AHRI. Recognized
as the nations leading river conservation organization, AR even
lists the Initiative as one of its own programs! AR manages flood mitigation
(i.e., relocating homes and businesses), and it promotes eco-tourism and
species-reintroduction projects that result from the Initiative. Ironically,
none of the ten rivers recommended by the Advisory Committee for AHRI
designation appear on ARs list of "Americas Most Endangered
Rivers." An American Rivers employee told Capital Research Center
that "American Rivers did not intend to be that involved, but realized
that they were needed to assist the river towns in obtaining the funding
for all of the projects."

AR even uses the AHRI designation as a hook for new congressional appropriations.
It requested $52.6 million in fiscal year 2001 for the upper Mississippi
River, in order to "help communities reconnect to the upper Mississippi
River." Helping communities connect to American Rivers is more like
it. The request includes $10 million from the federal Land and Water Conservation
Fund to acquire land, which helps facilitate AR projects along the upper
Mississippi. In 1997, the latest year for which data is available, EPA
awarded $185,000 in grants to AR for conservation programs, notably a
floodplain demonstration project for the upper Mississippi. New projects
bankrolled at private and public expense cannot be far behind.

The organizations designated Community Partners under AHRI are also showing
up in federal awards records. Prior to filing the nomination for the Hanalei,
the University of Hawaii received $3,650 from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service in 1996 for predator control. But two weeks after the Hanaleis
designation, the Service awarded the university over $90,000 for pollution
controls and for study of "rare and endangered species."

In late 1996, the Providence Plan received two EPA grants totaling $20,000
for "school based environmental awareness and action" and just
$5,000 for "environmental education" regarding the soon-to-be-nominated
Woonasquatucket River. But over the next two years, as the Woonasquatucket
proceeded through the nominating process and onto American Heritage Rivers
list, EPA made grants totaling $64,000 to the Providence Plan specifically
devoted to "watershed outreach" for the Woonasquatucket. EPA
functions as the Interagency Committee contact for the Woonasquatucket.

Similarly, the Conservation Fund of North Carolina received a first-time
federal grant of $40,000 in 1998 for more "watershed outreach."
As in the case of the North Carolina Conservation Fund, the EPA award
may in essence be a matching grant for the initial investment of the Z.
Smith Reynolds Foundation whose grant was devoted to "heritage tourism"
and "sustainable growth" along the New. It is difficult to see
how these grants to foundation-backed organizations coordinating AHRI
on the local level can be anything other than a political pay-off for
supporting the Initiative.

The American Heritage Rivers Initiative is the culmination of years of
calculation and coordination by liberal foundations, radical environmentalists,
and government officials. Its stated goal of linking environmental protection
and historical preservation to economic development masks the reality
of who benefits. The foundations and activists gain influence and tap
the U.S. Treasury. Taxpayer money defrays foundation costs and helps ratify
foundation investments in the environmental movement. State and federal
politicians use the initiative to assault private property. And the leaders
of the nonprofit Left undermine democratic institutions that average citizens
depend on. Cui bono?

Christopher Summers is a research associate with Capital Research
Centers "Green Watch" project, monitoring the environmental
movement. Christopher Yablonski is a CRC research associate specializing
in nonprofit public affairs organizations, their leadership and funding.
For information on Green Watch, see http://www.capitalresearch.org.